At night, the plains on the south bank of the Danube River were dark. Occasionally, skirmishers from both sides encountered each other in the wilderness and shot at each other. Occasionally, there was a burst of gunfire in the empty plain, and then it quickly returned to calm.
Surrounding the Fortress of Gyor and a few thousand yards to the south, there are two bright lights. This is where the camps of the Holy Roman Empire's army and the Ottoman Empire's army are located. Both sides went to the Ming camp, and the bonfires were dotted across the wilderness, like two seas of stars falling on the ground.
Between the two star seas is an empty plain with a width of more than ten miles. If nothing goes wrong, a battle that will determine the rise and fall of the Holy Roman Empire and the Ottoman Empire, and will also permanently change the entire world, will soon begin. Will erupt in this empty plain.
In his camp, Henry Chu was leaning on a table made of several ammunition boxes, and was using a quill pen to copy a set of tactics he had just summarized in a notebook - it was not easy for him to do so. Convince the Ottoman Grand Vizier to go to the front line, watch and record this decisive battle with your own eyes!
This battle will not only determine the fate of the world, but will also change the pattern of war for many years to come - because Henry Zhu's father, Zhu Cixiang, took out the Goldfinger Mine bomb at the bottom of the box! Oh, now it's called corked rifled bullets.
This kind of ammunition is very easy to load (because the warhead is one size smaller), allowing the firing rate of rifled guns to exceed that of smoothbore guns. This improvement is enough to change the pattern of war.
You must know that the effective range of a rifled gun is far greater than that of a smoothbore gun - the only difference between the two is a cannon that fires shotguns!
Rifled guns can fire outside the effective range of shotguns. If the rate of fire is fast enough and the number is large enough, they can completely paralyze the enemy's artillery placed in front of the formation to support infantry operations. Moreover, rifled guns that use cork rifled bullets can also pose a huge threat to the enemy's charging cavalry...if there are enough rifled guns, they can be used for volley shooting. Then a row of riflemen can kill and injure fast-running cavalry at a distance of several hundred yards. Before these cavalry rush forward, they can usually complete three effective shots. With a musket, you can usually only complete one shot.
Of course, although rifled guns equipped with cork rifled bullets are good, they are not without some shortcomings. The biggest shortcomings of rifled guns are that the output is too low and the price is too high. If it had not been for Aurangzeb’s patronage to the Ottoman Empire, Grand Vizier Ahmed Koprulu would not have been able to assemble more than 6,000 rifled guns for the Yenicherry Army in just a few months. . 2,000 of these rifled guns were purchased from France, 300 were brought by Zhu Henry to the Ottoman Empire, and the remaining 3,700 rifled guns were purchased from the Ottoman Empire by Ahmed Koprulu at a high price. The rifled gun purchased from the nobles in the territory is rarely equipped with troops because it is expensive, but it is the first choice gun used by nobles from various countries when hunting. There are not many in the Ottoman Empire. There are dozens of them even in the palace of the Sultan (Mehamed IV is a hunting fan), and there are dozens of them in the palace of Leopold I (his queen Claudia. Felicitas is a hunting fan), so with the efforts of Ahmed Koprulu, the Yenicherry Army was soon equipped with more than 7,500 rifled guns (the Yenicherry Army was originally equipped with some rifled guns).
And the old man Ahmed Koprulu also knew that his "rifled gun advantage" was a one-time thing! As long as the opponent picks up a corked rifled bullet on the battlefield, the Ottomans' advantage will be gone, and may even turn into a disadvantage... The Ottoman Empire is far inferior to the British, Dutch, and French in terms of gun-making ability. These European handicraft powerhouses.
Therefore, in order to maximize the "rifled gun advantage", Ahmed Koprulu decided to focus on the use of rifled guns, and concentrated all 7,500 rifled guns into 50 newly established long rifle battalions. Each long rifle battalion consists of 150 long riflemen, 120 arquebusiers and 270 pikemen. The 150 long riflemen are divided into two parts. One part is a long rifle company composed of 120 long riflemen (under the jurisdiction of the Long Rifle Company). 4 platoons); the other part is a skirmisher team composed of 30 long riflemen with particularly outstanding shooting skills. They are directly under the battalion commander of the long rifle battalion and are responsible for covering the brigade and sniping the enemy's artillery and officers.
The tactics and formations adopted by these long rifle barracks are similar to European square formations, with the pikemen as the walls, and the long riflemen and matchlock soldiers are responsible for the firepower output.
At the same time, Ahmed Koprulu also formed many "half companies" equipped with 6-pound artillery (that is, units equipped with 4 to 6 6-pound cannon), which were directly assigned to the regiment (consisting of three to four battalions). composition).
According to Ahmed Koprulu's vision, the tactical thinking of the long rifle battalion will be to use long rifles and matchlocks to protect the long rifles to attack the enemy's artillery and cavalry at long distances, and then use the long rifle battalion to protect one's own artillery half. Get close to the enemy's infantry phalanx and use the 6-pounder cannon to produce shotgun blasts to hit the opponent...
Henry Zhu recorded the infantry phalanx tactics "invented" by Ahmed Koprulu in a notebook, named it "Ottoman phalanx", and put it in his backpack. Then I put on my clothes and lay down on the camp bed. I couldn't sleep - tomorrow is the time for the decisive battle!
He was a good diplomat, and now he was tricked into the battlefield! He has to think carefully about who was tricked? It seems to be that wicked and smoking bastard Liu Shu Wang!
No, when I return to Yingtian, I must tell my mother and let her blow my pillow. I must send Uncle Liu to Africa to be the king...
...
King Leopold I was too excited to sleep that night.
Because he will soon become the hero of Catholicism, the defender of Christ, the defender of Central Europe, the liberator of Hungary... and maybe the liberator of Serbia and Bulgaria!
With better luck, he might be able to become the liberator of Constantinople and once again plant the banner of Christ on the walls of Constantinople!
Thinking of this, King Leopold I was so excited that he almost cried!
Just when his eyes were about to be drowned by his own tears, Lorraine's Charlie's voice came from outside the tent.
"Your Majesty the Emperor! There is important news!"
King Leopold I said: "Come in quickly..."
Charlie of Lorraine opened the curtain and walked into the camp. He saw the emperor wiping tears and was a little dazed: "Your Majesty, are you..."
"There's sand in my eyes... There was a gust of wind blowing in [81中文网] just now..." Leopold I said, "Charlie, is there any important news?"
"It came from Lorraine," said Charles. "The 100,000 French troops led by Louis XIV have arrived in Lorraine and are waiting for you to allow them to enter the land of the Holy Roman Empire!"
"Really?" Leopold I smiled, "Charlie, do you think we really need them?"
Charlie of Lorraine was stunned, "Your Majesty, this is 100,000 French troops! And the one actually in charge is Prince Condé!"
Leopold snorted coldly: "He saw that we were in sight of victory, so he wanted to take a share of the pie... If I allowed him to enter and let him share the honor of victory. Then... ...You may not become the Grand Duke of Lorraine."
France's occupation of the Principality of Lorraine was "illegal". Only one country in Europe, the Netherlands, recognized that Lorraine belonged to France. The rest of the countries recognized the Principality of Lorraine as part of the Holy Roman Empire and recognized Charles IV as the Grand Duke of Lorraine.
So the possibility of Charles becoming Charles V is still very high!
But Louis XIV has become the savior of the Holy Roman Empire, so who can ask him to get the Principality of Lorraine back?
Charlie couldn't say anything for a moment, although many years of military experience told him that the Ottoman Empire would probably have a back-up plan, and the war in front of him would not be easy to win.
But he was absolutely unwilling to give up his power over the Principality of Lorraine!
King Leopold I looked at Charlie, "Charlie, wake me up at four o'clock tomorrow morning! I'm going to kill the Tianfang believers!"
